Winemaker Notes
Lovely deep garnet with black cherry hues and a youthful bluish edge. The first nose showcases cherry fruit, baked blueberries, mixed wild berries and feral notes lifted by lovely aromatic herbs: wild thyme, mint & rosemary. The smooth and soft entry traveling all in length reveals a youthful yet refined and soft texture and a long finish that dances between blueberries and blackberries with lingering iron-rich earthy notes. An age-worthy and compelling wine, a bit of a wild card from this cult site.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
Dynamic and structured, with expressive smoky meat and black cherry aromas and layered dark plum, licorice and stony mineral flavors that persist toward well-buffed tannins. Drink now through 2025.
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Wine Enthusiast
All of Lavinea's wines are deftly detailed, but none more than this. Citrus, rosemary, wet rock and well-ripened tannins add complexity to the core of blueberry and brandied cherry fruit. Beautifully balanced and long, it's coming together nicely and should continue to improve over the next half decade or more.
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
COMMENTARY: The 2016 Lavinea Temperance Hill Vineyard Pinot Noir is a wine for a Pinot lover. TASTING NOTES: This wine exhibits lovely aromas and flavors that are varietal. Pair its vibrant aromas and flavors of red fruit and herbs with lightly-spiced, roast game birds. (Tasted: November 1, 2019, San Francisco, CA)
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Wine & Spirits
From a windswept site on Temperance Hill, this wine has shy scents of lavender and cherry blossoms. The flavors are lean and cinched in the middle, delineated by fine oak and cherry flavors. It needs a bit of time to come together.
Thin-skinned, finicky and temperamental, Pinot Noir is also one of the most rewarding grapes to grow and remains a labor of love for some of the greatest vignerons in Burgundy. Fairly adaptable but highly reflective of the environment in which it is grown, Pinot Noir prefers a cool climate and requires low yields to achieve high quality. Outside of France, outstanding examples come from in Oregon, California and throughout specific locations in wine-producing world. Somm Secret—André Tchelistcheff, California’s most influential post-Prohibition winemaker decidedly stayed away from the grape, claiming “God made Cabernet. The Devil made Pinot Noir.”
Running north to south, adjacent to the Willamette River, the Eola-Amity Hills AVA has shallow and well-drained soils created from ancient lava flows (called Jory), marine sediments, rocks and alluvial deposits. These soils force vine roots to dig deep, producing small grapes with great concentration.
Like in the McMinnville sub-AVA, cold Pacific air streams in via the Van Duzer Corridor and assists the maintenance of higher acidity in its grapes. This great concentration, combined with marked acidity, give the Eola-Amity Hills wines—namely Pinot noir—their distinct character. While the region covers 40,000 acres, no more than 1,400 acres are covered in vine.